Recent articles

Bike-friendly Boston: These five datasets let journalists track the city’s progress

A bike is a simple contraption, but making cities bike-friendly? Not so easy. After decades of cars dominating the streets, integrating bike-friendly traffic lanes and traffic patterns is a slow […]

June 1, 2021June 1, 2021 Saima Sidik Roundups

Exploring climate data using the Python libraries Matplotlib and Pandas

Mapping toxic waste release sites using the Python library GeoPandas

How journalists use the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory to report on environmental justice

Jan Diehm of the Pudding brings human-centered design to storytelling

Boston lacked a system for the public to keep tabs on police, so the Boston Globe built a public database

The other side with photogrammetry: How Taylor Lorenz went behind the camera with some of LA’s most illustrious influencers

2020 Election Coverage Tracker

Reopen schools narrative spreads across shadowy local news sites

Americans are divided about reopening schools this fall and polls show that this disagreement falls along party lines with Republicans more in favor of children returning to schools. Which is […]

August 26, 2020August 26, 2020 Aleszu Bajak Election Tracker

How news media are setting the 2020 election agenda: Chasing daily controversies, often burying policy

Facebook continues to run political ads with misinformation

Even before Ukraine news, Joe Biden was the 2020 candidate with the most media coverage

Pete Buttigieg is flooding Iowa and New Hampshire with Facebook ads about his climate plan

In the effort to cover impeachment inquiry, media ignores 2020 candidates

Gabbard, Booker and Biden get most negative media coverage over last four months

Tutorials

Exploring climate data using the Python libraries Matplotlib and Pandas

If you’ve just grabbed a new dataset and you want to look for interesting trends, making some exploratory graphs in Jupyter Notebook is a good way to start. I usually […]

May 31, 2021June 1, 2021 Saima Sidik How to

Mapping toxic waste release sites using the Python library GeoPandas

How journalists use the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory to report on environmental justice

How to calculate a rolling average in R

Update: How to geocode a CSV of addresses in R

How to shift Alaska and Hawaii below the lower 48 for your interactive choropleth map

What I learned applying data science to U.S. redistricting

Behind the Scenes

Boston lacked a system for the public to keep tabs on police, so the Boston Globe built a public database

The killing of unarmed people of color at the hands of the police led to protests and calls for change last summer. As popular support for the Black Lives Matter […]

April 13, 2021April 14, 2021 Emma Plante Behind the scenes

How Stamen turned a photo archive into an interactive art experience

Storybench Founder Aleszu Bajak on the moral call of the pandemic and his return to daily data journalism

How Sean Evans made Hot Ones an Internet Sensation

How the Boston Globe encouraged readers to support restaurants through #ProjectTakeout

How the Wall Street Journal conducted a video investigation into the role of the Proud Boys at the Capitol

How Lazaro Gamio of the New York Times visualized the COVID-19 death toll

How journalists use the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory to report on environmental justice

May 4, 2021May 4, 2021 Saima Sidik How to, Insights, Tools

Storybench Founder Aleszu Bajak on the moral call of the pandemic and his return to daily data journalism

How disinformation fuels political polarization

How and why journalists must navigate the uncertainty of political forecasting

Bike-friendly Boston: These five datasets let journalists track the city’s progress

June 1, 2021June 1, 2021 Saima Sidik Roundups

C+J 2021: How the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped data journalism

A roundup of coronavirus dashboards, datasets and resources

Five ways organizations are visualizing carbon emissions

Longform

Reporters often cover traumatic events but discussions of mental health are rare in most newsrooms. That’s changing.

Journalists who are frequently first responders at harrowing scenes of devastation and human suffering are primed to develop post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, depression and anxiety – the “big four” […]

January 22, 2020April 3, 2020 George Barker and Stella Westlake Insights, Longform

Journalism schools need to focus on data, local news, social media and business models. Here are some that are.

The future of machine learning in journalism

Journalists improve coverage of memes with careful reporting

How the Palm Beach Post unearthed an opioid conspiracy with roots in Florida

Social media and news: The dilemma of our time

How The Washington Post designs its Snapchat stories

What is Storybench?

Storybench takes an “under the hood” look at the latest in digital storytelling, from data visualization and investigative journalism to virtual reality and the digital humanities. In addition to in-depth features and interviews with industry practitioners, we offer hands-on tutorials that can be “downloaded” right into the newsroom or classroom.

We also publish research we're running at Northeastern's School of Journalism along with collaborators in data science, communication studies, computational social sciences and information design. These projects include the Co-Laboratory for Data Impact, the Climate Journalism Lab, the 2020 Storybench Election Coverage Tracker and the Reinventing Local TV News project.

Want to contribute to Storybench? Pitch us or join us for a graduate degree in the Media Innovation program at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Subscribe to our newsletter

Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker

The Storybench 2020 Election Coverage Tracker intends to keep tabs on the political coverage of the 2020 presidential election by covering media trends and using various data sources to explore media narratives.

Instead of keeping track of who’s ahead in the horse race, we’ll be turning our focus to those covering the horse race – the media outlets themselves and various proxies for public attention. Follow along here.

Best of Storybench

How the Wall Street Journal visualized 500+ conflicts of interest of the Trumps

Women on the 2020 campaign trail are being treated more negatively by the media

Getting started with data visualization in R using ggplot2

Understanding what makes a visualization memorable

Using French wine reviews to understand TF-IDF, a measure of how unique a word is to a document

Projects

Over the next two years we’ll be surveying the media’s coverage of the candidates and the issues. Follow along here.

The Reinventing Local TV News Project, from Northeastern’s School of Journalism, is analyzing the formats and practices of local news stations, and suggesting new ways of telling stories that can better engage diverse audiences. Read our inaugural post here.

The Climate Journalism Lab

The Climate Journalism Lab aims to examine and unpack the trends, tools and techniques employed by reporters and organizations covering climate change.

Join us at Northeastern!

Want to write for Storybench and probe the frontiers of media innovation? Apply for one of our graduate programs at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism.

Rolling admissions, no GREs required and financial aid available. Email here.

Interviews

Pizza, Press & Politics is our weekly speaker series at Northeastern’s School of Journalism. Watch interviews with David Filipov, Mike Workman, Jenn Smith, Martha Durkee-Neuman, Susan Labandibar, John Ward, Marc Fortier, Carol Gregory, Ling-Mei Wong and Elana Gordon.

Collaborative, Open, Mobile

Over the last three years, Storybench has interviewed 72 data journalists, web developers, interactive graphics editors, and project managers from around the world to provide an “under the hood” look at the ingredients and best practices that go into today’s most compelling digital storytelling projects.

They boil down to three key areas of emphasis: 1) highly networked, team-based collaboration; 2) an ethos of open-source sharing, both within and between newsrooms; 3) and mobile-driven story presentation. Read our paper here.